Legislative Spat Signals Slow Down for Privatized Public Schools
“There’s ‘no appetite’ for passing a bill this year that imposes sanctions against poorly performing public or private voucher schools” reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an Associate Press story.
“No appetite” was code for “we don’t have the votes”.
The “sanctions” for public schools included forcing the closure of a school or forcing its takeover by a privately operated charter company – both options took away local school district control.
Meanwhile the Senate Education Committee met for the third time in as many weeks to take up a much-watered down version of “school accountability”.
As we read through the seventh version of the bill, lawmakers quizzed the nonpartisan Legislative Council attorney. She confirmed the primary change the bill now made was to move up the date by which private schools receiving public money are required to send their publically funded students’ information to the state.
This was a far cry away from the previous versions that required the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to label a group of failing public schools every year that could be converted to charter schools operated by a “private charter management company” – completely taking away local control through the democratically elected local school board.
As we were briefed by the attorney on what the seventh version of the bill did, the Assembly Education Committee was